There are two major edible small crustceous in common use as food within the United States. The primary crustacean is the common shrimp, which is relatively familiar to almost all persons in the United States. The shrimp has a relatively thin exoskeleton, or shell, which is easily peeled by hand from the shrimp body either while the shrimp is raw or while the shrimp is cooked. In addition the shell is quite thin, very flexible, and has a marked spinal division or crease, all of which have led to the widespread introduction and invention of numerous methods of automatically peeling shrimp. These methods in general take advantage of the fact that under compressive pressure shrimp meat is generally extruded intact from the very flexible shell. Alternately, the machinery takes advantage of the fact that the shrimp shell, especially on raw shrimp, is easily cut by knives while avoiding cutting the shrimp meat.
The crawfish is a much less widely exploited crustacean. Although it is extremely popular as a staple food item in Southern Louisiana, and has a marked acceptance, although less exploitation, among persons, especially of Scandanavian descent, within the Central and Midwestern United States, it is relatively unknown as a food item in the rest of the country.
Like the shrimp, the crawfish has almost all of its edible meat in the tail section; and the head of the crawfish must be removed. Unlike the shrimp, however, the crawfish most closely resembles a small Maine lobster, having large meat containing claws and an extremely stiff and hard exoskeleton. Like the lobster, the crawfish when cooked turns a bright red. When removed from cooking, the crawfish tail is tightly curved; the meat in a rigid, plate-like shell, extremely resistant to cutting, having a marked brittleness and a low ductility.
The normal method of eating a crawfish, which requires that the crawfish meat be removed from the shell, involves breaking the crawfish, and removing the head piece which contains little edible matter, straightening the shell with the fingers, and attempting to squeeze the shell, much in the manner of squeezing a tube of toothpaste from the bottom.
If the hungry gourmet or afficionado has developed the right touch of finger and forefinger, he quite often can squeeze out the crawfish meat. More often, the meat either breaks, leaving a portion in the shell, or it does not come out at all. At this point, the by now probably famished diner is reduced to attempting to piecemeal dissemble a shell structure as impervious as that found in a lobster tail but approximately 1/10th the size.
Crawfish is a very succulent meat comparable to the lobster in flavor but considerably more delicate. In addition crawfish can be raised readily as an adjunct to rice farming. The crawfish life cycle matches the flood and drainage cycle in standard rice culture. Crawfish are completely compatible with the operation of a rice field, and as a result many rice farmers raise crawfish as a second crop. However, the general difficulty of eating crawfish has restricted the market essentially to a very small subgroup within Louisiana and a few related states who, for cultural reasons, or out of familiarity with the crawfish, look upon it as a preferential food.
The difficulty of eating the crawfish, the small amount of meat that is obtained for a considerable amount of physical labor when hand shucking crawfish, have all combined to restrict the widespread acceptance of crawfish as an alternative to shrimp as in a seafood. This has been reflected most recently in a severe overproduction of crawfish in Southern Louisiana and a consequent severe drop in the price. The crawfish industry is apparently at a saturation point in terms of providing adequate crawfish supplies to those customers currently within its market. Any further production and any further expansion of this particular industry will depend upon an expended customer base, which in turn will depend upon a solution of the problem of removing the meat from the crawfish. As a comparison, the current shrimp industry is a creature of the invention of automated means for removing shrimp meat from the shrimp shell. Shrimp factories are now the primary direct market for the shrimp fisherman.
It should be noted that some of the disadvantages of peeling crawfish are: (1) the spicy, staining juice that is produced from boiling the crawfish often flies from the custacean while attempting to hand peel; (2) while peeling the sections of the shell, you often find that a force sufficient to break apart the shell can be painful to your fingers; and (3) it should also be noted that a drawback in eating crawfish is due to the difficulty small children have peeling them. So, in turn, while peeling your child's crawfish, your own become cold and undesirable.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,524,490 describes a crawfish peeler device which is designed for removing the meat from a crawfish tail. This device has a handle adapted to the human hand and contains a pair of spring-biased opposed elongated concave tongs with curved inward tips. The crawfish peeler is inserted into the tail. The tongs pass along the crawfish tail meat within the lower shell. The peeler serves to break the individual ligamentary connections between the crawfish meat and the crawfish tail. The tongs are then squeezed tightly together by the hand and withdrawn. The meat will accompany the tongs upon the removal of the tongs. Unfortunately, this device requires perhaps greater manipulation than the simple removal of the meat from the crawfish tail in conventional fashion. This is also a relatively expensive apparatus to manufacture.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for removing the meat from a crawfish shell which effectively removes the meat in a convenient and easy manner.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for removing the meat from a crawfish tail which requires a minimum of manipulation.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for removing the meat from a crawfish tail which is easy to manufacture and is relatively inexpensive.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a reading of the attached specification and appended claims.